Yesaya 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ¹ 

they associate with ²  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ³  payoffs. ⁴ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁵ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ⁶ 

Yesaya 5:29

5:29 Their roar is like a lion’s;

they roar like young lions.

They growl and seize their prey;

they drag it away and no one can come to the rescue.

Yesaya 19:25

19:25 The Lord who commands armies will pronounce a blessing over the earth, saying, ⁷  “Blessed be my people, Egypt, and the work of my hands, Assyria, and my special possession, ⁸  Israel!”

Yesaya 36:10

36:10 Furthermore it was by the command of the Lord that I marched up against this land to destroy it. The Lord told me, ‘March up against this land and destroy it!’”’” ⁹ 

Yesaya 36:18

36:18 Hezekiah is misleading you when he says, “The Lord will rescue us.” Has any of the gods of the nations rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria? ¹⁰ 

Yesaya 41:4

41:4 Who acts and carries out decrees? ¹¹ 

Who ¹²  summons the successive generations from the beginning?

I, the Lord, am present at the very beginning,

and at the very end – I am the one. ¹³ 

Yesaya 41:11

41:11 Look, all who were angry at you will be ashamed and humiliated;

your adversaries ¹⁴  will be reduced to nothing ¹⁵  and perish.

Yesaya 57:18

57:18 I have seen their behavior, ¹⁶ 

but I will heal them and give them rest,

and I will once again console those who mourn. ¹⁷ 

[1:23]  ¹ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ² tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ³ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁴ sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).

[1:23]  ⁵ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ⁶ sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.

[19:25]  ⁷ tn Heb “which the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts] will bless [it], saying.” The third masculine singular suffix on the form בֵּרֲכוֹ (berakho) should probably be emended to a third feminine singular suffix בֵּרֲכָהּ (berakhah), for its antecedent would appear to be the feminine noun אֶרֶץ (’erets, “earth”) at the end of v. 24.

[19:25]  ⁸ tn Or “my inheritance” (NAB, NASB, NIV).

[36:10]  ⁹ sn In v. 10 the chief adviser develops further the argument begun in v. 7. He claims that Hezekiah has offended the Lord and that the Lord has commissioned Assyria as his instrument of discipline and judgment.

[36:18]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Have the gods of the nations rescued, each his land, from the hand of the king of Assyria?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course not!”

[41:4]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Who acts and accomplishes?”; NASB “Who has performed and accomplished it.”

[41:4]  ¹² tn The interrogative particle is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[41:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “I, the Lord, [am with] the first, and with the last ones I [am] he.”

[41:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the men of your strife”; NASB “those who contend with you.”

[41:11]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “like nothing”; NAB “come to nought.”

[57:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “his ways” (so KJV, NASB, NIV); TEV “how they acted.”

[57:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and I will restore consolation to him, to his mourners.”